Science and Engineering: Differences Revisited
Stacks at a Power Station
Back in February, I had written a post about the differences between science and engineering, titled “Science Isn’t Engineering; Engineering Isn’t Science.”
This morning, I came across a very interesting blog by a guy named Eric Drexler, who writes about science and technology at Metamodern.com. He elaborates more on the topic that I had superficially written about in my earlier science/engineering post. In “The Antiparallel Structures of Science and Engineering” Drexler writes that, although science and engineering share the same language, the way the approach problems are different:
Science and engineering are inseparable fields, linked by a shared language of mass and energy, molecules and thermodynamics, physical systems and physical law. This shared language makes communication deceptively easy — easy, because scientists and engineers can see every detail in the same way; deceptive, because they see these details in different contexts, forming different patterns and presenting different problems. In a fundamental sense, science and engineering are antiparallel, facing in opposite directions. …
The information flows that link these levels are antiparallel: In scientific inquiry, physical systems shape their descriptions through measurement, and the results constrain and shape general, abstract models (theories) by testing them. In engineering design, by contrast, descriptions (specifications) shape physical systems through fabrication, and general, abstract models (system concepts) shape descriptions through design.
The other fundamental difference is that while science attempts to explain the natural world, engineering trys to develop designs to meet certain needs, or requirements:
While science aims (ideally) to produce exact descriptions of all parameters of all members of a general class of physical systems, engineering aims to manufacture instances of a single kind of system, making choices to ensure that its functional parameters will equal or exceed those specified by a design description.
Likewise, while science aims to formulate a single theory that exactly fits all parameters of every description, engineering aims to design at least one description of a system having functional parameters that equal or exceed those required by one of a potential multiplicity of system concepts.
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